36 PLANTS, SEEDS, AND CURRENTS 



Mr. Bullock, the naturalist, who had himself picked them up on the 

 Orkneys, identified the seeds. 



In recent times we have Lindman and Sernander. The last 

 named deals especially with the subject in his Den Skandinaviska 

 Vegetationens Spridningsbiologi (Upsala, 1901, p. 116, etc.); and the 

 results obtained by Lindman and his predecessors, including the 

 Linnean botanists, are there discussed under the name of " Gulf 

 Stream products." Lindman made a comprehensive study of the 

 subject in 1880. It appears that the coasts northward from Sond- 

 more to Lofoten and Tromsoe receive most of the West Indian seed- 

 drift. But it reaches as far north as the vicinity of the North Cape, 

 and may even, as Robert has shown, double that promontory and 

 enter the White Sea. To the south it extends to the Swedish and 

 Danish coasts, and it is found on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The 

 seeds of most frequent occurrence are those of Entada scandens, 

 Guilandina bonducella, and Mucuna urens. In the first two cases 

 Lindman procured the germination of the seeds. Those of Entada 

 scandens have even been found in a subfossil condition in the peat- 

 bogs of Tjorn on the south-west coast of Sweden, having been 

 originally stranded in post-glacial times on a beach in that locality. 



A word may be said here on the doubling of the North Cape by 

 West Indian seed-drift. That the seeds reach the extreme north 

 was long ago mentioned by Wahlenberg in the work quoted above, 

 where he refers to them as washed up on the Finmark coast. Robert, 

 the French naturalist, who was in this region in 1835-6, states that 

 his companions found the seed of Mimosa (Entada) scandens on the 

 island of Mageroe, on which the North Cape lies. Lottin, he says, 

 picked up a seed of the same plant near the same promontory in 

 " Laponie " (Lapland), which would indicate a locality to the east 

 of the cape. Robert himself found the same seed on the shores of 

 the White Sea. Gumprecht, Fogh, Vibe, and others allude to these 

 interesting discoveries, the references to which are given at the close 

 of the chapter. 



Amongst the stranded drift named in Sernander' s list are the fruits 

 of Anacardium occidentale, Cassia fistula, Cocos nucifera, Garcinia 

 rnangostana (Mangosteen), Lagenaria vulgaris, etc. The Mangosteen 

 fruit was found by Lindman in 1879 cast up on one of the Lofoten 

 Islands, and was doubtless thrown over from a ship in the vicinity. 

 The two first named have not been found since the time of Gunnerus 

 and Strom in the middle of the eighteenth century ; and, as indicated 

 in later pages, their West Indian origin as components of Scandina- 

 vian beach-drift is improbable. Gourds and calabashes, sometimes 

 " worked," have been known to be stranded from time to time on 

 the coasts of Norway ever since the days of Gunnerus and Strom. 

 In the discussion of Crescentia it is stated that there are grounds for 

 the belief that some of these gourds of Norwegian beach-drift belong 

 to this genus. Crescentia gourds are in common use in the West 

 Indies, and form a characteristic feature of the drift on West Indian 

 beaches, the tree (C. cujete) being a native of that region. Lagenaria 

 gourds most probably reached the coasts of Norway from passing 

 vessels. Coco-nuts have been picked up on Norwegian beaches 



